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Khaled Ibrahim Wins SC14 HPC Challenge with Best FFT Performance
November 24, 2014
Khaled Ibrahim
Khaled Ibrahim of CRD’s Computer Languages and Systems Software (CLaSS) Group won the HPC Challenge for the fastest performance of a Fast Fourier Transformation (FFT) application at the SC14 conference in New Orleans. Ibrahim tuned his application to achieve 226 teraflop/s running on the Mira IBM BlueGene Q supercomputer at Argonne National Laboratory. His result was 9.7 percent faster than the runner- up, which ran on Japan’s K computer.
The 2014 HPC Challenge Awards Birds-of-a-Feather session was the 10th edition of an award ceremony that seeks high performance results in broad categories taken from the HPC Challenge benchmark as well as elegance and efficiency of parallel programming and execution environments. According to Future Technologies Group Lead Erich Strohmaier, Ibrahim’s FFT performance was the biggest surprise due to its winning margin.
This was Ibrahim's first time entering the challenge. He used a lightweight runtime and algorithmic changes to boost the performance. Ibrahim was also the runner-up for best performance of the high performance LINPACK benchmark and stream benchmark, which tests bandwidth to memory. In addition, he was second runner-up for GUPS, a measurement of the speed of updating randomly generated locations in memory.
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Founded in 1931 on the belief that the biggest scientific challenges are best addressed by teams, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and its scientists have been recognized with 16 Nobel Prizes. Today, Berkeley Lab researchers develop sustainable energy and environmental solutions, create useful new materials, advance the frontiers of computing, and probe the mysteries of life, matter, and the universe. Scientists from around the world rely on the Lab’s facilities for their own discovery science. Berkeley Lab is a multiprogram national laboratory, managed by the University of California for the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science.
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